Path: csiph.com!x330-a1.tempe.blueboxinc.net!usenet.pasdenom.info!weretis.net!feeder1.news.weretis.net!feeder.erje.net!newsfeed.straub-nv.de!feed.xsnews.nl!border-2.ams.xsnews.nl!xlned.com!feeder5.xlned.com!newsfeed.xs4all.nl!newsfeed6.news.xs4all.nl!xs4all!news.alt.net!news.astraweb.com!border5.newsrouter.astraweb.com!not-for-mail Date: Mon, 27 Feb 2012 00:29:44 -0500 From: JimR User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:10.0.2) Gecko/20120223 Thunderbird/10.0.2 MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.networking Subject: Re: Is my home network set up right? References: <4lmn19-ruo.ln1@myleafnode.oneyv.org> In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: <8vgr19-00s.ln1@myleafnode.oneyv.org> Lines: 70 Organization: Unlimited download news at news.astraweb.com NNTP-Posting-Host: 27e0fde0.news.astraweb.com X-Trace: DXC=Nd^lehcVAnPJRMXARX No information on intermittent errors = no answer possible Fair comment. The explanations are fairly long, but here is the most succinct that I can describe them. Two different cases: One. We were shopping for a vacation on www.cheaptickets.com. Halfway through the shopping selection screens, it would suddenly reroute us to www.vast.com , a nondescript site that looks like one of those you get when it can't serve the page you requested. This happened numerous times, on 3 different computers, Windows 7, Kubuntu Linux and Mandriva Linux, but was rather unpredictable as to when in the process that it would happen. Restarting, rebooting, etc. didn't help. I eventually used a work machine that connects the same wifi router, but then VPN tunnels to my work site, and it worked fine. I have to think that it was something that my ISP (The Big US Cable Company that owns the Big US TV Network) was doing in their routing, but I can't imagine why. A similar re-routing happened months ago on a completely unrelated site. Two While I am browsing Reddit from the laptop (1st laptop, often frequently used for this activity), I will often follow links to imgur.com. After some number (subjectively a dozen or two), I will suddenly start to get 404 errors on the imgur pages, or else imgur will display the frame of a picture, but never fill in the image. I contacted imgur tech support, and they suggested a DNS problem. This problem never happens on the primary desktop. > >> Here is how I am set up. The DNS set on the Linux machine may be >> redundant, since I hope that my router provides DNS to the house. > > Meaning on laptop1 you can ask about laptop2 and the router provides > the DNS data - yeah, that's often the case, but it depends on how you > set up the router. Did you read the documentation about that? IIRC, they really don't discuss Linux in their setup options. They seem to think that M$ rules the world. > > What kind of "bad reports"? Slow? Providing wrong answers? While > those two 4.2.2.x hosts are "public" DNS servers, it's usually smarter > to use your own. You have to also think that DNS servers "out there" > don't know anything about your local network, and will therefore return > NXDOMAIN if asked about them. That breaks things. You should be using > the appropriate tools to investigate your DNS problems - even something > like 'tcpdump', 'ethereal', or 'wireshark' will show _which_ DNS server > you are asking, and what response you are getting. There are also the > regular DNS testing tools: Here's one such bad report. BigCableCo did not resolve correctly, but Google DNS did. https://supportforums.cisco.com/thread/2126556 > During this week, I will experiment with your other suggestions. Thanks for taking the time to help. JimR